Demon’s Crystals is a 3D twin stick shooter that arrived on PC in 2016. Nearly a year later, console players can now enjoy this $5 game. While a story isn't really needed, I’ll share it with you now. Urican demons have been on the top of the food chain until strange beings arrived that changed the peaceful inhabitants into hostile ones. It’s now up to the Urican demons to bring things back to the way they once were.

The arcade mode can be played solo or cooperatively with friends. In this mode you have to clear several levels before facing off against a boss. In order to complete a level you’ll have to satisfy the requirements of collecting a specified number of crystals or eliminating a certain amount of enemies. Oftentimes you’ll have to do a little bit of both. I like how the progress is saved and that the players can resurrect each other as often as needed. If you die alone or with a friend, you’ll have to restart the current level. You can continue as often as you like, which is nice. If this was genuine arcade game, I would have lost a lot of quarters!

Like all twin stick shooters, one of the joysticks is used for movement while the other guides a constant stream of bullets. The default firing mode isn’t that powerful, but thankfully there are many fun power-ups that spawn in random locations. Some of the power-ups change the formation of your bullets or create multidirectional streams. One of my favorite power-ups are the huge rockets that are good by themselves and even better when you can shoot three at a time! The invincibility mushrooms are nice too. Health and additional time bonuses are always welcome as they are often in short supply. You have to be careful at what you grab since there are debuffs as well that subtract time or confuse your controls.

Highlights:

Strong Points: Fun twin stick shooter that’s great to play alone or with friends; low priceWeak Points: A tad repetitive, but fun in short spurts; no online playMoral Warnings: Shooting at zombies, skeletons, and other various monsters; rune/magic use; revealing outfits

The survival mode is the only one that does not allow for more than one player. As the title suggests, your goal in this mode is to survive as long as possible while trying to earn a high score. Sadly, there is no option for online play so you’ll need to recruit some family or friends to play with or against.

If you’re the competitive type, there are six multiplayer modes to choose from. Here’s a quick breakdown of them:

Crystal Quest – Collect as many crystals as possible before the time runs out.Deathmatch - The last player standing wins.Kill the Enemies - Shoot as many enemies as possible, but don’t kill the gnomes as they’ll reset your score!Seize the Large Crystal - Break through the barrier and capture the crystal before your opponent.Survival – See if you can withstand more waves of enemies than the others can.Versus – Eliminate the opposing team.

As you can tell, this $5 game has a lot to offer. The game variety is decent, but this title is still best in short spurts since it may get a bit repetitive after a while. My son and I had a lot of fun playing this game together.

If you don’t mind the Halloween themed monsters and rune magic, this game is pretty family friendly. The violence is mild and the visuals remind me of the Skylanders games. They’re a little bit dated, but they’re colorful and get the job done. The sound effects are decent too.

If you’re a fan of twin stick shooters, Demon’s Crystals will be a great addition to your PC or console library. The asking price is very reasonable and it’s bound to entertain you and your family/friends for a little while.

The classic 2D Donkey Kong Country and 3D Banjo-Kazooie games bring back many fond memories for gamers who enjoy platformers from the '90s era. What made these games special is their challenge and the thrill of collecting all of the items despite their treacherous locations. The creative talent behind the aforementioned games are on staff at Playtonic Games and their first project, a “Rare-vival” called Yooka-Laylee was successfully Kickstarted in June of 2015. The $175,000 goal was exceeded with its ending amount reaching over 2 million.

The main characters, the chameleon Yooka and his female bat companion Laylee begin the game lounging around their tropical home in Shipwreck Creek when Capital B and Dr. Quack threaten the existence of all of the world’s literature. Along with many books, the enchanted pages from Yooka and Laylee’s mysterious Grand Tome are taken away from them. They must travel to Hivory Towers to re-collect all of the Pagies and quills scattered throughout the five worlds.

Each vibrant and 3D rendered world has two hundred quills in it and those are used for purchasing moves from a shady snake seller named Trowzer (trouser snake, get it?). Some of the moves include rolling up slippery slopes and shooting projectiles. Battling against bosses or fully exploring the world will not be possible without these moves, so be sure to buy them early and often. Thankfully, the quills are pretty easy to locate and collect.

Pagies, on the other hand, often take more effort to get. They are used for expanding and opening up new worlds. Each world has twenty-five pages in it and they are usually locked away until a quest of some sort is completed. One of the easier quests is locating the fractions of a page to make a whole one. Other pages can be yours by winning races or by completing timed challenges. If some of the challenges are too much for you, you can skip them, but be warned that one-hundred Pagies will be required to take on the final boss.

Ghost writers dwell in each world, and they'll reward you with treasure if you get their attention. In order to get them to acknowledge you, you’ll need unlock some of Trowzer’s special moves first. There are some characters who will refuse to talk to you in your chameleon form. When you befriend a scientist named Dr. Puzz, she’ll be able to transform you provided you can get her machine up and running first.

As you can imagine, the Pagies take a lot more work to get and there are plenty of them to retrieve if you’re a completionist. Besides the main game, there is a retro arcade with a few minigames that can be played by yourself or with a nearby friend, stranger, or family member. Here’s a quick rundown of the minigames:

Bee Bop – As a bee drone, you must defend your hive from invading enemiesBlag the Flag – Keep your flag secure from enemies that are after itGlaciators – Collect as many quills as you can before the time runs out. You must be wary of the shifting ice and enemies coming at youGun-Tlet Run - Blast away at corplets in this chaotic shoot ‘em upHurdle Hijinx – A poker themed racetrack that requires you to jump and switch lanes to avoid upcoming obstaclesJobstacle Course – Collect quills in this shoot 'em up gameKartos Karting – See how fast you can complete your laps without hitting obstacles, enemies, or negative power-upsUp ‘N’ Nova – Collect quills in this space flying game

Some of the minigames are over when the time runs out while others let you play until your five lives are depleted. When the mini-game ends, your score will be added to the local leaderboard. While these games can be played solo, I highly recommend recruiting a friend. Playing a kart game without any opponents is boring and wrong.

Yooka-Laylee is mostly kid safe and will hopefully entertain more than frustrate younger gamers. Some of the innuendo went over my head at first, but they're present. There’s cartoon violence and some burping, but that’s as bad it gets. The humor is silly and appreciated.

In the end, Yooka-Laylee is a cute game with the exception of annoying gibberish voice acting. Aside from that complaint, this title is bound to entertain gamers for a while, but it doesn’t bring anything new to the table. If you’re longing for a retro styled platformer, Yooka-Layee will deliver in spades, but don’t expect anything more and you’ll be happy.

Earlier this year a successful Kickstarter was launched to bring Aaero to Steam along with its PS4 and Xbox One counterparts. For a two-man development team, I’m impressed with the outcome and I’m sure that the backers will be pleased with the final product as well, as long as they like dubstep music.

Aaero is a rhythm rail shooter game where you must guide your ship along the music rails when they’re present or else your ship will lose one of its three shields. These shields are sacred and are not replaceable in the level. When you lose all three you’ll have to start over from the beginning.

Shields can be lost by hitting an obstacle or by sustaining an attack from enemy aircraft. Some areas of the map are open and you can freely fly, while many areas, including the inside of a giant sand worm, are very cramped with partially blocked pathways. Sometimes the path closes in on you and you have to quickly steer towards the remaining opening. Other times there are helpful arrows to let you know which direction to head toward. Last but not least are the completely cheap deaths/shield depletions from areas closing in on you without any warning whatsoever.

Enemy aircraft and their attacks can be targeted and shot at with the right joystick. Your ship can shoot several shots at once, which is quite helpful but never enough when multiple enemies lock in on you simultaneously. If you enjoy boss fights, you’ll be happy to know that there are some in this game.

At the end of each of the fifteen levels, you’ll be scored on the percentage of time you’ve spent on the music rails, how many enemies you have killed, and by how many of the optional targets you have destroyed. There are online leaderboards to compare your score with everyone else’s and don’t worry, I won’t be much of a threat. Aside from aiming for higher scores, you’ll also want to unlock the most stars possible for each song since they’re required to unlock other tracks/songs in the game.

While I played on the default/Normal difficulty, there are several more including Advanced, Master, and Chill Out. You can play Chill Out at any time, but you’ll need to have a 90% completion on the Normal difficulty to play advanced and 100% to enjoy the Master mode.

The controls are pretty simple, but mastering this game will take some patience and skill. The left joystick is required for staying on the music track/ribbon. I like how parts of the song play and fade away depending on if you’re on the ribbon or not. The right joystick is for locking in on enemy targets and the trigger fires your weapons at them. Doing all of this simultaneously while staying on the fluctuating track takes some serious coordination and precision.

It’s no secret that I’m getting older and my hands quickly got tired after playing three or so tracks. If you can handle more than that in one sitting, count your blessings! People dealing with carpal tunnel may want to play this game on another platform or skip it altogether.

Other than the first song which got a bit repetitive since it was used for the tutorial as well as first mission, the majority of the game’s music is pretty pretty good... if you like dubstep, that is. If you don’t like electronic music or dubstep, you’ll probably want to pass on this game.

Since I’m a sucker for music games, I enjoyed Aaero and recommend it to anyone who likes space shooters and rhythm based games. Other than shooting down spaceships, this game is suitable for pilots of all ages. I look forward to upcoming titles from Mad Fellows Games.

Typoman Revised is a 2D puzzle platformer that was originally released in 2015 on the Wii U and later came to PC and PS4. In 2017, the Xbox One was the latest platform to add this game to their library. For the reasonable price of $12.99, you can set off on a journey to save the world from doom and evil.

The hero is comprised of the letters of the word hero and begins his journey rolling around as the letter O. As the other letters/body parts are collected, he’ll be able to jump, climb, and swing across the various obstacles in his way. The last body part to be assimilated is the Hero’s second arm. Sadly, the enemies keep running off with it and it’s used as incentive to keep going. A guardian angel like figure gives the hero some hope and initially shields him from danger. Most of the time, the hero is on his own though and needs both agility and wits to survive the puzzles ahead.

Highlights:

Strong Points: Fun and unique game conceptWeak Points: Short amount of gameplay; graphics stuttering; there are many tricky puzzles, but walkthroughs exist!Moral Warnings: Cartoon violence

Many of the dangers are words or even letters by themselves. The spikes the hero will have to avoid are capital As. The enemies are made up of the words doom, evil, gorge, and so on. One of the most useful enemies is Lie who you can use to convert words to their antonyms. I love how good truly conquers evil in this game.

While there is a decent amount of platformer gameplay, there are more mind benders than anything. So many dead ends have to be solved by combining letters and/or unscrambling words to conjure up a solution. For example, if a door is closed due to a switch being off, you’ll have to build the word “On” to flip the switch.

The levels have a desolate and gloomy feel to them and scattered throughout are quotes of inspiration and hints to help solve upcoming riddles. As you collect quotes, they’ll be displayed in the game’s journal and if you miss some it’s pretty obvious when you read it.

There are lots of ways to die in this title and I’m grateful for the generous amount of checkpoints provided in this game. Besides spikes, there are stomping blocks, poison gas, fire, electricity, and syringes that will kill you if you’re pricked by them twice. Since the hero is comprised of letters, his deaths are not bloody and he often disappears with a simple pop or puff of smoke.

In total there are three chapters and the prologue which teaches you the controls and basic gameplay mechanics. If you’re decent at platformers and word puzzles you should be able to beat this game in a couple of hours. I’ll be the first to admit that many of the word puzzles stumped me, but there are plenty of helpful YouTube walkthroughs available out there.

If you enjoy platformers and word puzzles you should definitely look into Typoman Revised. This title is available on many platforms and since I experienced some stutters on my Xbox One Slim, I’d recommend the PC version for better performance. Given the macabre environment and syringes, I agree with the E10+ rating and recommend this game for slightly older children.

The MotoRacer series began in 1997 and I remember enjoying it quite a bit on my (much slower) PC. The first couple of games were available on the PlayStation as well. The third installment never made it to the consoles and received poor ratings. After twenty years, the fourth game has arrived on multiple platforms. Can it restore the series to its former glory?

In Moto Racer 4 you can jump right into the action and do a quick game or unlock more racers and bikes in the Career mode. Since you only start off with a couple of bikes and racers it’s probably best to unlock more and find out which ones suit your racing style best. Unlocked bikes and racers can be used in multiplayer mode, but you’d better have friends to play against since nobody is playing this game online apparently.

In Split Screen mode you can play against a friend in a point based championship mode or in a standard race. Other game modes include King of the Road, where you have to stay in first place or Last Man Riding where the rider in last place is ejected from the race at timed intervals. Last Man Riding is more fun in the career mode with more players than in split screen. When I played the Hunter mode with my brother the races only lasted fifteen seconds since it didn’t take me long to catch up to him (the prey) despite the head start he was given. The last mode is called Golden Helmet where the racers must find and wear the helmet for a set amount of time to win the race.

Highlights:

Strong Points: A decent mix of asphalt and dirt racingWeak Points: Dated visuals; long loading screens; nobody is playing it onlineMoral Warnings: You can knock racers off their bikes

In the single-player Quick Game mode you can do a Single Race, a multi-race Championship, a Time Attack, or Hot Lap. You only have three laps in Time Attack while you can race an unlimited number of times in Hot Lap to beat the best time.

The Career mode combines many of the modes and depending on how well you do, you’ll earn stars which can be used to unlock future events, racers, and bikes. Before a race, you have to wager on your performance and gain or lose stars depending on the results. The more stars you wager, the tougher your opponents will be.

While most racing games focus on speed, Moto Racer 4 awards you style points for all the fancy moves you can pull off during the race. Simple and long jumps will give you points if you can land properly while flips and wheelies can net you even more points. If you cut too many corners or fail to do stunts properly, you’ll lose points.

The controls are pretty straightforward with the right trigger to accelerate and the A button for doing stunts like wheelies. If you do a wheelie long enough, you’ll get a speed boost. It is worthwhile to be daring, but you’ll have to be careful too. If you miss a turn or hit an obstacle like a car, you’ll respawn and lose precious time. Thankfully, there is no blood or gore shown when you take a nasty spill.

Before a race, you’ll have to stare at a loading screen for a bit. While the quotes from the racers are helpful and entertaining, I’d still prefer not having extended loading times.

The graphics are another letdown. Despite this being an Unreal Engine 4 game, the low quality textures appear to be a generation or two behind. On a big screen this title could pass for a PS2-PS3 era game. I was also surprised to notice my Xbox One Slim stuttering while playing this game.

There’s a wide variety of maps and I like the changing locales ranging from forest and desert roads to expressways on tropical islands. The maps are well designed and offer multiple routes and shortcuts to utilize.

There is no voice acting, but the sound effects are decent. The background music is peppy and pleasant to listen to while racing. None of it was particularly memorable though.

Though the retail price is $39.99, it sells for less than $20 on Amazon. While it’s worth the $19.99 price tag, I certainly wouldn’t recommend it at full price. The lack of multiplayer is disappointing, but the single-player and co-op races are fun. This game is suitable for aspiring racers and stunt drivers of all ages.

When you first launch Ghost Blade HD, you get to select a single or local multiplayer game and a ship, and then start shooting things and dodging hundreds of bullets. If you want to find a reason for blowing stuff up, you’ll need to head over to the website since it’s nowhere to be found in the game.

Since we've been to the game's website already, we'll share a quick recap of the story. Roughly 10,000 years ago an artificial intelligence called Shira was built to protect Mars. Unfortunately, the AI became corrupt and began attacking the colonies. Since the colonies are defenseless, they call for help from the Earth Defense Force fleet. As “Evil Shira” launches an invasion force and sets its sights on ruling the galaxy, it up to the bravest fighter pilot (you) to stop it.

There are three ships to choose from and each of them has a different shooting style that gets more and more powerful as you collect power-ups. When fully upgraded, many of the attacks can spray bullets canvasing half of the screen or more. Firing bullets and automatically dropping bombs is easy enough; the real challenge is dodging the enemy bullets, missiles, and laser beams simultaneously.

Your ship has a tiny vulnerable spot that should be guarded at all costs. When hit, your ship will either auto-deploy a bomb and clear away all of the enemy fire, or it may subtract a life. There are lives and credits; while lives can be replenished in game, credits never are. When you run out of lives, you can continue at the cost of a credit and after you use all of them up, it’s game over. Once your game ends, you can add your name to the online leaderboards.

Even though I got further than my brother, he still has the number one score on the easy difficulty. Combos really pay off in points. The leaderboards are separated by the three difficulties and I have the number one spot on normal. Since beating the first boss was challenging enough for me on normal, I haven’t attempted the hardest difficulty yet.

There are five levels in total and each of them ends with a monstrous boss that needs to be defeated in ninety seconds or less. If you beat the game, you can try again at a harder difficulty or with a different ship to get some more replayability. Depending on how you good you are at shoot ‘em ups, you may beat this game on your first sitting. (I didn’t.)

There are thirty-seven achievements if you’re into those. In order to get them all, you’ll have to pilot each of the ships. The Xbox controls are simple enough with a joystick to move and pressing the A button to fire. The X button unleashes a more powerful attack.

Since you’ll be shooting down enemy ships, there is some violence. Each ship has a bathing suit clad woman representing them. I am assuming they are the pilot, and if so, they sure have revealing flight gear. Other than that, this game is relatively clean.

All in all, Ghost Blade HD is a solid Shoot ‘em up game that’s fun by yourself or with a friend. The levels are action packed and the bosses do a good job in reducing the number of lives you have left. If you enjoy bullet heck games this one is worth picking up. If you’re really good at them, you may want to wait for a sale since this one only offers five levels.

The world was once peaceful and a goddess protected the tiny blue villagers as they brought gifts to her stone idol. Not long ago, the goddess stopped talking to the villagers and bestowed upon them an infant named Ginger. When Ginger came of age, his village and others nearby were devastated by an attack on the crystals that have been corrupted and scattered across the land. It’s up to Ginger to cleanse the crystals and to restore the towns who are missing their inhabitants.

In order to rescue villagers and rebuild towns, Ginger will have collect blue crystals and building materials throughout his adventure. The blue crystals act as a currency to rescue villagers and to buy accessories to cheer them up after the trauma they’ve been through. Another way to make them happy is to rebuild their houses that have been destroyed in the chaos. In order to rebuild their houses and other buildings you’ll need to locate items such as wood and rocks. Sometimes they can be found scattered throughout the land, but another way to earn these resources is by completing quests.

Besides cleansing crystals, Ginger can be kept busy by completing tasks for the villagers. The quests usually consist of fetching various items, defeating nearby monsters, or winning a timed race. The compass-like interface on the bottom of the screen makes it easier to find the items needed for the fetch quests, although it can only track the resources required for one quest at a time. Because of this limitation, you may only want to accept one quest at a time.

Before moving onto the next town, the current one must be fully cleansed of its evil by purifying all of the red crystals into blue ones. There are two red crystal level types; one method is when a red crystal appears in a town you can jump into it to enter a 3D platforming challenge. Typically, you’ll have to cleanse several red crystals that are on floating platforms, which are surrounded by several spinning and rotating ones to navigate through.

The other method of cleansing red crystals involve going through portals to enter various themed areas like a volcano, a crypt, and a mine to name a few. These areas have one crystal to cleanse but getting to it requires appeasing or defeating a guardian/boss of some sort. These areas typically have sections that are only available if Ginger has the appropriate outfit/ability.

Throughout his journey, Ginger will rescue people who will grant him special powers. For example, a minstrel will give him the ability to play a lute to unlock gates by repeating a simple musical melody puzzle. Another ability he’ll acquire is to change into a mouse to access areas that he would normally be too big to enter. To extend the gameplay time you’ll have to go back to previously explored areas to access and open chests that were not available to you previously. Another option to extend your gameplay time is to try the hard/old-school mode that transforms the checkpoints to mere healing stations. With some of the timed puzzles, I’m happy with my choice of playing this game on the default/normal difficulty.

Fans of many classic 90’s style 3D platformers will find much to like in this colorful and cute game. Overall Ginger: Beyond the Crystal is well polished, but there were some noticeable slowdowns on my Xbox One. The soundtrack is exceptional and sets the mood nicely. The voice acting consists of gibberish which some may find cute.

Though this game is relatively safe for children to play, they may get flustered at the difficulty and skills required to complete the spinning platform challenges. On the moral front, there are several references to druid beliefs and goddess worship. Ginger can wear a magician outfit, which grants him the ability to cast magic spells. Lastly, some of the levels have undead enemies and Halloween themes.

If you like challenging platformers and don’t mind the worshipping of goddesses and crystals, then Ginger: Beyond the Crystal is bound to entertain you for a bit. The price is a reasonable $19.99, but I’d hold off for a sale just in case the jumping and timed puzzles aren’t your thing.

Valentino Rossi is a professional motorcycle racer from Italy who has won nine Grand Prix World Championships. He is considered one of the greatest motorcycle racers of all time. Like many successful racers it was only a matter of time before he got a video game focused on his career.

In the Rossi Experience game mode, you can re-live many racing milestones for him and try to beat his times. Before you attempt to take down “The Doctor,” you should complete some races in the VR 46 Rider Academy. The single-player races must be completed in order, but you can replay them to improve your racer’s position and stats.

For each race completed you'll earn experience for various stats such as breaking, throttling, agility, cornering, body position, and physical condition. You’ll also earn virtual currency to unlock custom gear to ride and wear.

Highlights:

Strong Points: Plenty of game modes and decent variety of motorcycles and cars to race; active multiplayer communityWeak Points: DLC nickel and dimingMoral Warnings: You can wipe out and damage your ride, but no blood is shown

The races take place in various weather conditions and you’ll need to become an expert in all of them to do well. While there isn’t any snow, you’ll have to race in varying degrees of rain and track wetness. Fortunately, practice makes perfect in this racing simulation game.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not much of a racer and this game reminded me how out of touch I really was. There are various settings you can adjust from the AI difficulty to enabling damage, penalty timers, disciplinary flags, riding aids, and physics realism. Even with the AI set to “Very Easy” I still did poorly against them.

Despite doing pitiful against the AI racers, I decided to try the multiplayer mode. Up to twelve players can race at a time, but only half of the slots were filled when I played. The remainder of the slots were filled in by AI racers. I got my butt handed to me there and I made the poor human racers wait for me until the race timed out and put me in 10th out of 12th place. I should have gotten last place, but two human players must have timed out or something. Local multiplayer is an option if you want to see who the best racer in your house is.

There are plenty of racing modes to choose from including Flat, Drift, and Rally. Most of the races involve motorcycles, but you can drift and race in cars too. There are DLC packs to add radio controlled cars or the 2009 Ford Focus Rally Car. Realistic event packs for 2015 and 2016 are available separately as well. Last but not least is a premium points pack if you want to level up your racer faster.

The racer customization is a nice touch, but the option to purchase gear with real currency exists. The graphics in game get the job done, but I wasn’t blown away. The rag doll physics when falling off my bike looked pretty painful. Thankfully there was no blood shown.

The sound effects are decent and the background music is fitting, but not memorable. The academy members are all voice acted and sound good. Given that they are from all over the world, many of them have accents.

If you like racing around the world or attempting to best The Doctor’s times, then Valentino Rossi The Game is worth looking into. There’s plenty to do and a fair amount of people online to race against. While this game is family friendly, it is challenging and might be too hard for people (like me) who don’t play racing games on a regular basis.

Battleship is a classic board game that I have not played in ages. I’ve been wanting to show it to my kids, but the electronic one that I had growing up is listed for $80 on Amazon. The newer versions of Battleship aren’t as sturdy and like all physical board games, you can lose the pieces. This version of Battleship is only available in digital format and provides thirty story missions and endless local and online matches. If you’re looking to play against anyone online, you had better look elsewhere since I was not able to find anyone to play against.

Thankfully you can still play against the computer or a friend. Playing against your friend requires the honor system as the game asks the opposing player to look away while the ships are being deployed. Each player needs their own Xbox account or a guest account logged in to join a game.

The classic game rules can be used where only one shot per turn is allowed or you can play the much faster Clash at Sea mode. With the new rules each player earns three white and red pegs per turn. Spending them during the ninety-second turn is optional as more powerful attacks require more pegs.

The advanced attack modes require active ships so as your fleet gets depleted, so do your options. Some of the enhanced attacks let you place five white pegs at the cost of four. Another new move lets you deploy a mine that will attack anything in its radius when hit with a missile. If you want to canvas a rectangle shape or an entire row (throughout a couple of turns), it's possible with the new rule set. With the added arsenal of moves available, more strategy is added along with faster gameplay.

Five tutorials are available to teach you the basic and advanced battle techniques. The story campaign is decent though the enemy AI seems rather dumb at times when it chooses not to sink ships right away after it detects them. The missions vary and some of them put you at a disadvantage by starting you off with less ships than your opponent or by requiring you to sink their fleet in a limited number of turns.

The enemies range from pirates to orcs and you can unlock and customize different fleets with Uplay points earned in-game at the Uplay store. The different fleets have variations of the same attacks at their disposal.

Visually this game won’t disappoint. The 3D graphics look good and you can rotate your grid to see your ship’s placement by pressing the right bumper button on the controller. When a ship is hit the controller will vibrate and you’ll see the cracks on the head-up display (hud) screen. When a ship capsizes it will appear on the grid and will be grayed out on your hud.

The sound effects are good, especially when a ship is hit. Each attack has its own sound effects too. The battle themed background sets the mood accordingly. Though there is dialog in the campaign, none of it is voice acted.

As fun as this game is there are a few things holding it back from a solid recommendation. The first is the fact that nobody is playing it online. Playing against humans is always more fun than dumb AI. Hopefully you can trust that your opponent will not be looking at the screen while you’re setting up your ships. My last complaint is the language. While it’s not severe, I still don’t think it’s necessary to include the word d*mmit in a family friendly title. This is not a word I would like my children to be saying when they get frustrated. Because of these issues I recommend passing on this title and sticking with a previous release or the physical version.

Not long after mankind set out to colonize the solar system they ran into hostile aliens and waged war against them and lost. As a final blow, the aliens set their sights on the sun to destroy it and annihilate us completely. Chaos ensues as people attempt to flee the solar system and pirates emerge in hopes of robbing them on the way out. It's your job to protect people from alien and pirate attacks.

Not much is known about the pilot you play as, but the ship you’re flying has the unique ability to teleport to the other side of the screen in an instant if needed. This capability will come in handy, but it has a re-charge time so you cannot rely on it too heavily. Most of the time you’ll be busy pixel hunting to find the safe spot to be in to avoid getting shot out of the atmosphere from the waves of enemies and bosses.

There are forty different enemy types and they vary in size and weaponry. Some of them shoot missiles while others are equipped with lasers or bullets to dodge to the best of your ability. If your ship collides with them or obstacles, it’s instant death. Fortunately, there are a generous number of check points to reload from. Sadly, you’ll be staring at a loading screen for a while between deaths.

The levels and enemy movements are all choreographed and do not change whatsoever. Pattern memorization will be essential to your survival. Sometimes the enemies simply cannot be dodged and you’ll have to locate a safe spot to be in to survive until the next check point.

Besides the pixel hunting for a safe place to be in, you’ll have to deal with awkward camera angles. There is no way to adjust your ship’s shooting trajectory. While the boss class ships move fluidly and change their angles, your ship cannot and this puts you at an extreme disadvantage.

Upgrading your ship’s primary and secondary weapons are done at the hangar between the eighteen levels. Credits collected for destroying enemies are used to fund your ship’s upgrades. The cost to upgrade raises with each enhancement.

The secondary weapons are fired automatically with the primary ones so there are no extra controls to worry about. To mix things up a bit, you get to fly alien ships occasionally. Those levels tended to be easier despite lacking the shifting ability.

While the 3D graphics are not amazing, they get the job done. There’s a wide variety of colorful landscapes and space backdrops to appreciate when you’re not busy dodging enemy laser beams and missiles.

The story isn’t narrated, but the radio transmissions are. I wasn’t impressed with the voice acting as it lacked emotion. The sound effects are fitting and the background music is passable, but not memorable.

Despite the combat violence and the word hell being used in the achievements, this game is safe for people of all ages to play. I don’t think they’ll enjoy it as much as other bullet heck games though. Solar Shifter Ex arrived on PC in 2015 and is half the price of the Xbox version. Even at $4.99 I would recommend passing on this title and getting a better shoot ‘em up game instead.